Dessert First (19 page)

My old, light brown hair was in a bag or in little bits on the floor. And in the mirror was an absolute horror. It was Marine-Corps-guy super-short in the back and the sides, with a longer spiky thatch left on top, sticking up, tipped with red highlights. Augh.

Rachel stared at me in sick horror when I got home, probably imagining what life must be like to be less good-looking and without piles of gorgeous hair. Or almost any hair.

The best Hunter could manage in our short Skype session that night was, “Uh, that's
really interesting
—and much better looking than my haircut.” Which wasn't saying much, because Hunter was cue-ball bald. I had a sick pit of misery in my stomach, instead of hair on my head, after I logged off from that conversation.

“I'm proud of you,” Mom said, the next morning at the breakfast table. A better reaction than Rachel's or Hunter's. “Some girl will be very happy with your hair.”

“Sure—she got the best part.” I hoped she'd have better luck than Beep did with my stem cells. Probably would. It's hard, even for me, to kill someone with just my looks.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“Mom, a red squirrel died, in a lightning storm, on top of my head. Not super okay.”

“You're beautiful,” Dad glanced up from the work stuff he was reading, to show he pretended he meant it.

“You need to spend more time at home.” I shook my head. “The beautiful one's Rachel. The blonde.” I looked like Donald Trump's love child with a short-haired Medusa. Maybe Dad didn't know any better. His idea of fashion was putting sunglasses on top of his head, in case his bald spot grew eyes.

“You can wear a hat,” Rachel said. “You want to borrow one?”

Right. Like one of Rachel's hats would fit. My head's not
that
swollen. Plus, hers are designed for piles of beautiful hair underneath. Which I don't have. As the kids at school reminded me, later that day.

I'd posted a warning on my blog and on Facebook that I'd chopped off my hair to donate to Locks of Love and instead of feeling noble, I was suffering from extra ugliness and hair-butchery-shallow-person's remorse. I put on my 49er ski hat before going out to carpool, as if the dead squirrel on my head still needed to keep warm.

“Hey,” Evan said when they picked me up. “Take off the hat. I want to see.”

“Sure. When summer comes.”

“I bet you look great with short hair.”

“Rachel offered to loan me hats—plural—so she wouldn't be embarrassed by the extra ugly sister, even at a different school.” That was the only time Rachel had ever offered to let me borrow clothes. “So—no.”

We picked up Tyler.

“Kat's going to show us her haircut,” Evan said. “She donated the rest of her hair to cancer kids.”

“Cool,” Tyler said.

“I'm not showing you my hair.”

“Then I'm calling my Massive Lifetime Favor,” Evan said. “And buying your hat.”

“You are
not
.”

“It's either that, or you have to come over for an all-night songwriting session at my house Friday.”

His mom's strangled noise carried from the front. I frowned at Evan and crossed my arms.

“If your hair doesn't look great,” Evan said. “I'll loan the hat back, and you won't owe me a favor anymore.”

I sighed. “No laughing allowed, okay?”

He nodded, and held out his hand. I took off my hat, and handed it to him. I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear another look like Rachel's.

“You look great,” Evan said. “Like Chloe from
After Darkness
, but with even shorter hair.” That's a videogame with zombies. I hoped Chloe was one of the live people. Evan ran his hand through my hair, from the back to the front. “Wow. Feels great to touch.”

I wanted to push my head into his hand, like Skippy did when he got petted. My stomach did a flip-flutter, but I wished he wasn't petting me like a zoo animal. “That's sweet, Evan. But give me back the hat.”

“If I give back your hat, the only reason will be because you look so great, all the other guys will want to run their hands through your bristly hair, and you won't have time for hanging out with me.”

Did he mean that?
Probably just trying to cheer me up.

“Before you give her the hat,” Tyler said, “could I touch Kat's hair?” An actual complete sentence. From Tyler. Before 8
A.M.
He has a long arm, so he reached over Evan. “Wow,” he said, running his fingers through what was left. “
Awesome
haircut.”

“Thanks, guys, but petting zoo is closed.” I pulled away from Tyler's touch. “And I can't face the Tracies like this.”

“Actually, you should,” Evan said. “If you wear the hat, they'll sense weakness, and close in for the kill.”

I wavered. He might have a point. “You think I'm weak?”

“You're the strongest person I know. But the Tracies won't see that, if you wear the hat.”

Evan thought I was strong? I couldn't even do homework. “Won't see what? Bad hair?”

“That you're different. Not afraid. And your spiky hair sticking up in the middle? It gives the Tracies, and everything they care about, the finger.”

“Totally.” Tyler laughed. “The hair finger.”

By the time we got out of the car, I'd let Evan talk me into not wearing the hat. The crazy idea that doing good trumped looking good rejected everything the Tracies thought was important.

Evan stuffed my hat in his jacket pocket, so I wouldn't chicken out. “Can I
please
touch your hair one more time?” he asked, after Tyler shuffled toward the school doors.

That was the least I could do, since I owed him a Massive Lifetime Favor, and it'd probably make me feel better about the hair butchery. “Sure.”

He reached up and ran his hand through my short hair, from the back of my neck to the top of my head. “Ummmm,” he said.

This was in plain view of everyone arriving. I looked up.

Tracie was fifteen feet away, looking shocked and horrified, standing frozen next to Ashley. Then her expression changed to tight-lipped fury. Like I'd personally insulted her by having my head touched by her ex-boyfriend while I was this ugly.

She spun and stalked into the building, and I thought,
uh oh.
I doubted that, even with her look of horror, we were done.

I made it work in first-period World History, telling people how I cut my hair for Locks of Love.

Unfortunately, Tracie and Ashley were in my first-period class, busy playing whisper-and-glance and passing notes back and forth. Which gave them plenty of time to plot how to deal with my short-haired presence in second-period Algebra 2. That class has all five of the Tracies and three of the Tracie-Wannabes.

I went to my locker and exchanged useless unread textbooks, made a stop in the bathroom, and then headed for Algebra 2, and the trap they set for me.

I was almost late to class, but Ms. Clarke wasn't at her desk yet. All the kids, though, turned around in their chairs to watch me come in. As soon as I came out from behind cover, several burst into laughter, the mocking ugly kind. Jenna put on an exaggerated mouth open expression of shock and horrified delight, both palms at her cheeks. Sara covered her eyes with a hand, as if it was too awful to see. The laughter crested.

I bowed, like they were laughing at one of my jokes, not at me. “Locks of Love,” I started to say as the laugh receded, but my throat was dry, so I couldn't make it come out loud enough.

“Lots of
ugly
.” Tracie said, to renewed laughter.

“I donated—” I tried to say.

“My fashion sense.” Ashley drowned me out.

“Bald Ho Monroe,” Kayla Southerland yelled, to even more laughs.

I couldn't speak. They were making fun of me because I tried to give my hair to a needy cancer kid. I was afraid I'd cry if I opened my mouth. And those little verbal barbs I always threw disappeared, or I couldn't find the grip to hold them. It was like being Rachel, except not beautiful.

So I held both hands up, turned the palms toward me, extended a leg behind me in a gymnast's curtsey, and flipped off the whole giggling class with a double-barreled one-finger salute.

“Kat Monroe!” Ms. Clarke snapped from the door right behind me. “What are you doing? Sit down
now
.”

The rest of the class thought that was even more hilarious—me getting in trouble—but Ms. Clarke silenced that by smashing her book down on a desk so hard it sounded like a gunshot. She had a stack of photocopies in her other hand, which she'd apparently made down at the office. She glared at me. “I don't appreciate someone entertaining everyone while I was gone. I could hear you all half the way down the hall. What's the meaning of this, Kat?”

She thought I'd orchestrated it. Me—the victim. I stared at her in wounded, tear-welling outrage.

She got it then, since it's hard to teach high school and be completely clueless about group cruelty. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Kat, what's going on?”

I shook my head, in mute injury. I wasn't saying. I couldn't exactly whine about how everyone was mean. That's just high school background noise. When I got my voice to work, I said, “Some people think I'm having a bad hair day.” More laughter, at that.

I spent the rest of the period with my head down on the desk, hidden in my arms. When Ms. Clarke had her back turned, writing an equation, I got pelted with a couple of folded notes. One I brushed out of my lap was folded in a triangle and said “great hair—not.” The other said “Bald Ho Monroe—is all your hair now down below?” Nice. Looked like a guy's writing. A third one hit me on the elbow and then fell on the floor, late in the period, but I ignored it. When classmates fling notes at you, they sting less when they bounce off your arm than if you read them.

The snickers and comments followed me to third-period girls' P.E., when I was picked in the last half of kids for volleyball, even though I'm a good player, because three of the Tracies were in the class, telling their captains not to pick the girl “with mange.” I ended up on a team with Ashley, whose lips curled into disgust when I got picked, as if bad hair was contagious. When our game got under way, some of the girls on the other team made a point of not trying to return my serves, because they might catch lice or cooties. Which would have been awesome, except after my sixth service ace, Ashley, near the net, turned around and said, “Way to go, Bald Ho Monroe.”

She gave me a smirk, then turned back to face the net. Her ponytail swayed, dark against her white tee shirt. I gritted my teeth. The gym was full of the squeak of running shoes on floorboards and the
ba-doom
of a volleyball landing one court over, but it seemed to get quiet and time almost stopped, as I tossed the ball up for my serve. A serve, nearly supersonic, that ended up in the back of Ashley's head.

While they were retrieving her glasses from behind the other baseline and she was clutching herself with both hands and wailing theatrically, I walked off the court and over to Coach Paulsen. “Either give me a punishment time out,” I said. “Or call an ambulance for the next girl who gives me crap.”

She looked at me, and, without missing a beat, raised her voice as if angry. “Monroe. You're in time out. And dismissed. Go dress in street clothes.” Before I crossed into the locker room, I heard her yelling. “Enough volleyball, girls. You're not even going for the ball, so you can run wind sprints the rest of the period.”

I shoved my red gym shorts and white tee shirt into my locker and then just sat there, as the other girls ran, again and again, right to the edge of the dry heaves. It would make them—especially the Tracies—hate me more. So what. Beep fought cancer, and for him, some days, the edge of the dry heaves would have been an improvement.

I kept thinking about it while dressing. Tracie and Ashley had set up everyone in Algebra 2 so the greeting wave of scorn was too high to surf.

Impressive. I can't even figure out how to tackle homework, and they choreograph mass humiliation? I was so blown away at that skill level—or something—it must have shown in my face when I got to fourth-period English, Mr. Brillson's class.

“What's wrong?” Mr. Brillson asked.

“Kat's having a good hair day,” Tracie said, from behind me, to general snickers.

Mr. Brillson used his patented teacher stare. The snickering stopped. I sat down, in the front. The bell rang.

“Are you all right?” Mr. Brillson asked.

I cleared my throat. “I donated my hair to Locks of Love, so a bald cancer child could have a wig. Now
some people
”—I nodded at Tracie—“think I look stupid.” I dropped my eyes to the desk. Actually, pretty much all of us, me included, thought I looked stupid.

Mr. Brillson said, “That's a great essay introduction. Our free writing assignment today is to write for fifteen minutes about a sacrifice we've made, or would make, to help someone else.” I don't think, for a second, that was in his real lesson plan. But I think he's awesome for it. “Kat, you might already have a topic. Okay, everyone. Fifteen minutes, and hand this one in. Go.”

You'd think I'd write about the damned hair, with that soft lob pitch. Nope. I managed exactly four sentences and put my head down for the rest of the time, while Mr. B walked up and down the aisles, looking at our work in progress.

Once upon a time,
I wrote,
I thought if I donated my stem cells to my brother, I could make him live.

I donated, but he didn't get better, and he died anyway. Or maybe he died because my cells killed him.

So what do I do now?

At the end of the fifteen minutes, everyone else handed in their pages. I crumpled mine and threw it away.